Can the Quicken account file be stored in iCloud?

vernea

Running Quicken Mac Version 7.1.1 (Build 701.49349.100) on macOS 13.4.1.

Can the Quicken file be stored in iCloud?

I have a couple of iMacs at home and use a MacBook Pro on the road, and I'd love to have access to a centralized account file no matter what machine I'm currently running.

In addition, I'm retired and so is my wife now and I'd like her to have the ability to enumerate transfers to and from her personal checking account so the joint checking account file would list "Remuneration for Comcast payment" rather than "Transfer to Acct XXXX XXXX XXXX 2014" for a line description.

Anyone have any ideas on how to host a cloud Quicken account file?

jacobs

It shouldn't be done. I don't say "can't" because if you try it, you may get the sense it works smoothly. Until it doesn't. Many users have reported issues with unexpected program behavior and, in the worst cases, being locked out of their data file. So, in short, do NOT store your live data file on any cloud service like DropBox, iCloud, OneDrive, etc.

That said, you can safely store backup files generated by Quicken in the cloud; you just need to restore them to your local hard drive to use, then replace a backup onto your cloud storage service to be ready for its next use.

– – – – –

Here's a more detailed version of the answer…

It's definitely possible to use your Quicken data on more than one Mac, but it requires a little work on your part. Quicken is built to have your data file on your local computer; while it can sync some information for use with Quicken's mobile app or web interface, it was not designed to fully sync your entire data file between multiple computers. To do that, you need to move your Quicken data file back and forth the between the two computers. You can use a cloud storage service or a thumb drive to make this pretty easy -- as long as you do it correctly.

Some basic do's and don'ts about moving a Quicken Mac data file around...

Do not store your Quicken data file on any cloud service, such as Dropbox or iCloud. It will likely lead to problems. Storing backup files on cloud storage is fine, but your live data file needs to be resident on your local computer. 

Do move only a compressed copy of a data file. A compressed file is either (a) one you create by selecting the file in the Finder and doing File > Compress, creating a .zip file, or (b) a backup file created by Quicken, which ends in .quickenbackup. Why? A Quicken data file is actually not a single file; it's a Mac "package" file, which is a wrapper around a collection of files and folders to make it appear to users like a single file. (Control-click on your data file and select "Show Package Contents" if you want to peek inside the wrapper.) Every Mac user account has a unique User ID number, and when you move files and folders around, permissions can be changed -- the result of which can be getting locked out of your data. Moving a compressed file and opening it on a different Mac won't result in permission problems. (Moving a compressed file can be either via a cloud service, a local network, Airdrop, or a flash drive.) 

This may sound like a pain, but it needn't be. After each time you use Quicken, move your backup or compressed file to a location — on cloud storage or a physical flash drive —  you'll start from the next time you use Quicken on either computer. Use the data file, quit Quicken, and again save the compressed file back to the same location. As long as you always start from the same location and replace a file to the same location — which takes just a few extra seconds — you will always be assured of working on the most current file and not having permission problems. 

If you use Dropbox or iCloud, one relatively easy workflow is to set your Quicken backup location to a folder on Dropbox or iCloud. So every time you quit Quicken, it creates a backup in a location both computers can access on Dropbox/iCloud. The only manual step is that to start your next Quicken session, from either computer, you need to drag the backup file from Dropbox to your Mac desktop and double-click it to launch it. When you quit Quicken, a new backup is created in the same place. (You also have to delete the working copy from your desktop, and make sure you always grab the most recent backup file on Dropbox/iCloud.)

That's a long-winded answer to a simple question, and the need to move your data file back and forth may seem a bit daunting. Once you set-up a system that works for you, and get the workflow worked out, I think you'll find you can make this work spending only a few extra seconds each time you use Quicken.

There's one other option which might work for you. If no one else is using your primary home computer, you could have Quicken installed in on computer A, and use a screen-sharing utility from computer B and computer C to the home A computer. This is only viable if you can leave computer A running all the time, and no one else would be using computer A when you want to access it from another computer. If this is viable for you, it's easier/faster to create a screen share on demand than to move the file back and forth all the time. 

vernea

That's kinda what I suspected, but I'd like to follow up with a request that storing an account file in the cloud be a future feature request.

I don't think that this is an unreasonable request: the mechanics of decompressing a backup file, sanity checking it, using it, and recompressing it at termination into a new file should be entirely possible. As long as all computers are pointing at the same cloud target directory it should be doable by the Quicken application. It could even detect the presence of a "file in use" lockout condition (and tell you what computer is using it) and at termination and see if there are more than five backups (or some user configurable number) and automagically delete old obsolete versions.

Technology advances by accomplishing desired tasks without manual intervention: if Quicken needs to produce a whole subdirectory of files to operate correctly, and cloud storage is only dependable if stored in a single binary image, there's no reason why the operating subdirectory has to be in the same format as the storage copy. Implementation could be via a storage option in the preferences.

retird

Quicken support post about Dropbox…

https://www.quicken.com/support/can-i-share-my-quicken-file-between-multiple-computers-using-dropbox

jacobs

I'd like to follow up with a request that storing an account file in the cloud be a future feature request.

There are two possible ways to do this. One would be engineering Quicken to work with a file residing on cloud storage. I don't see that happening. Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows use two different databases, but in most cases databases don't work well with cloud storage services. Cloud services optimize moving small blocks of data back and forth between the local computer and the cloud, but databases are constantly updating records randomly throughout a database, and cloud services don't tie in at a record-locking level.

The other alternative seems to be what you're suggesting: automating the movement of the file completely off the cloud to a local computer and back again. That seems more feasible, but I still suspect it's unlikely. First, Quicken would need to engineer different solutions for different cloud services, since Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and others work differently. I don't know what APIs those services provide to allow fail-proof file-locking. For instance, what happens if a user opens a Quicken data file by having it downloaded to their computer, and their computer crashes or their Internet connection is lost; there would need to be extensive programming for how to recover and get the latest file moved back to the cloud service in a future session. What happens if a user "checks out" a file and their computer dies? How could the older, locked version of the file which had been on the cloud service, be made accessible without checking in the file which had been downloaded to the local computer? If overriding the checkout is possible, how can it be assured that a user doesn't override a valid checkout to get the file not a second computer, and then complain that they lost changes they had made on the first computer? There are likely solutions to these and other questions, but making it foolproof and fail-proof would likely require extensive programming and new infrastructure to make it all work. The issue is that almost nothing is impossible with programming, but the amount of work needed to achieve a viable end-product may not be feasible. With all the needs facing the Quicken developers, I'm doubtful this would rise to the top too quickly.

Meanwhile, moving a .backup or .zip copy of your data file between your various desktop computers and iCloud is doable today, if you properly do it manually. It requires a few extra steps, but once you have the process in place, it's not terribly time-consuming. If it's important enough to you, it's possible that some third-party automation software could reduce the steps you need to take.

Finally, you said you wanted to submit this as a feature request, so let me address this. (I'm just a fellow Quicken user, not anyone who has a say in what gets developed.) You can do so by creating a new "Idea" post in the Product Ideas section of this forum. If it garners enough votes from fellow users, it get's forwarded to the product development team for consideration. Hundreds of Ideas have been created; about 10% get enough votes to go to the developers, and a much smaller number get a green light for future development, which can then take months, but more typically years, until being released.

vernea

There are two possible ways to do this. One would be engineering Quicken to work with a file residing on cloud storage. I don't see that happening. Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows use two different databases, but in most cases databases don't work well with cloud storage services. Cloud services optimize moving small blocks of data back and forth between the local computer and the cloud, but databases are constantly updating records randomly throughout a database, and cloud services don't tie in at a record-locking level.

Agreed … though this could be accomplished by Quicken hosting the source of truth file, as it seems to do with the mobile app data.

The other alternative seems to be what you're suggesting: automating the movement of the file completely off the cloud to a local computer and back again. That seems more feasible, but I still suspect it's unlikely. First, Quicken would need to engineer different solutions for different cloud services, since Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and others work differently. I don't know what APIs those services provide to allow fail-proof file-locking. For instance, what happens if a user opens a Quicken data file by having it downloaded to their computer, and their computer crashes or their Internet connection is lost; there would need to be extensive programming for how to recover and get the latest file moved back to the cloud service in a future session. What happens if a user "checks out" a file and their computer dies? How could the older, locked version of the file which had been on the cloud service, be made accessible without checking in the file which had been downloaded to the local computer? If overriding the checkout is possible, how can it be assured that a user doesn't override a valid checkout to get the file not a second computer, and then complain that they lost changes they had made on the first computer? There are likely solutions to these and other questions, but making it foolproof and fail-proof would likely require extensive programming and new infrastructure to make it all work. The issue is that almost nothing is impossible with programming, but the amount of work needed to achieve a viable end-product may not be feasible. With all the needs facing the Quicken developers, I'm doubtful this would rise to the top too quickly.

The actual mechanics of such a scheme are not complicated if you're dealing with a mounted file system - lockout could be achieved by the presence of a Checked Out By file with the option of opening a read-only copy of the last saved file, restoring to the last good copy (read/write which would reset the Checked Out By to the current machine), or cancelling the load. A new machine ID in the Checked Out By file (or the file's absence) would inform the current lease holder that his copy has been invalidated and would give the lease holder options of storing the file locally or reverting to the currently valid global copy.

I've actually long felt that financial data is stored in hard binary files is too simplistic and vulnerable to accumulated errors, and that your data should be stored in a series of human readable text files, and that changes should be implemented in a forward recovery log with hard save points implemented as hard updates to the base text files. This would allow you to roll back changes to a known good state if things should go awry, or a computer should crash while a series of linked updates are in-flight.

Computers are getting more and more powerful, and networks faster. We should take advantage of those developments by implementing techniques used by robust mainframe multiuser financial programs.

jacobs

Agreed … though this could be accomplished by Quicken hosting the source of truth file, as it seems to do with the mobile app data.

I don't think the data in Quicken Cloud is a "source of truth" file at all. If anything, it would be the desktop file. Quicken Cloud involves some very complex bi-directional syncing between the cloud data and the desktop data. Data can be downloaded to a user's desktop and separately to Quicken Cloud, and it has to distinguish what's a duplicate and what's not. It has to track records which have been edited in either place, and which is ahead. And it has to track transactions which are invisible to us — pending transactions a financial institution may send, or transactions previously sent, which Quicken needs to recognize and weed out. I think most people underestimate the complexity… and we're reminded of it when people report errors with local data being overwritten by cloud data which Quicken doesn't recognize is older.

I've actually long felt that financial data is stored in hard binary files is too simplistic and vulnerable to accumulated errors, and that your data should be stored in a series of human readable text files

Well, I don't know of any high performance database which works like that. Quicken Mac uses an industry-standard SQL database, and I can't imagine them giving up the security and performance benefits of such a database for something which is stored in plain text. And it would require pretty much starting over with the back-end of Quicken Mac, which I think has a near-zero chance of happening. 😉

retird

MS Access database software has been around for ever…. it can be done…. at least this is a good read….

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/ways-to-share-an-access-desktop-database-03822632-da43-4d8f-ba2a-68da245a0446

MS Access and SQL Server are powerful database management systems with different features. MS Access is easy to use and can handle smaller datasets, whereas MS SQL Server is more robust, can manage large datasets, and comes with enhanced security.

jacobs

Ah yes, a database server can handle all the issues with remote/distributed and multi-user databases. As a Mac user, we don't have MS Access, but I have long used FileMaker Pro, which is Mac-native but was long ago made into a cross-platform database. And there's a FileMaker Pro Server product. But none of that describes using a SQLite database from a cloud storage provider, as this original request is about. (Cloud storage handles data very differently than a mounted file server.)

vernea

I don't think the data in Quicken Cloud is a "source of truth" file at all. If anything, it would be the desktop file. Quicken Cloud involves some very complex bi-directional syncing between the cloud data and the desktop data. Data can be downloaded to a user's desktop and separately to Quicken Cloud, and it has to distinguish what's a duplicate and what's not. It has to track records which have been edited in either place, and which is ahead. And it has to track transactions which are invisible to us — pending transactions a financial institution may send, or transactions previously sent, which Quicken needs to recognize and weed out. I think most people underestimate the complexity… and we're reminded of it when people report errors with local data being overwritten by cloud data which Quicken doesn't recognize is older.

I meant that Quicken.com could optionally host the source of truth making local copies of Quicken more like terminals connected to a server based database - making it possible to be accessed from multiple computers and perhaps even a web app.

Quicken is already a subscription based service - data hosting could just be another element of that subscription.

Local backups could be stored on the local machine and the server could host a multi-generational backup of its own. Who understands the data better than Quicken?

Sanity checks could be run at regular intervals attempting to determine if software bugs may have inadvertently corrupted data (like broken double entry accounting links and fix them).

The whole point is that being able to access your data from anywhere is a highly desirable feature and this could bypass the vagaries of other host's cloud storage.

Also, this would mean that even if your house burns down and kills your computer and burns up your backup systems, your financial data would be secure.

jacobs

But what you're asking for would require a complete re-write of Quicken's technology, for both the Mac and Windows products, both of which are closely tied to features in their operating systems. I'm not saying that would be a bad thing, but I just don't think it's at all practical.

I've been a Quicken Mac user for three decades, and I have closely observed the re-write of Quicken Mac after the dead-end of the legacy product after 2007. I have watched the development of the modern Quicken Mac, from its very first beta in 2014 through today, and I've seen how progress is achieved in slow, small bites — and how far Quicken Mac still is today from having all the desired features of its predecessor and its Windows counterpart. I don't believe Quicken has the time/resources/money to essentially start over again on both Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows.

But here's the kicker. If you're looking for a multi-user, use-anywhere, cloud computing product, they've already created it: it's Quicken Simplifi. Now, today, Simplifi doesn't nearly match the depth and breadth of the Quicken desktop products, but that's probably where the future lies.